Archive for July, 2008

David Olofson has been subjected to a gross miscarriage of justice.
What happened to Olofson could happen to any American who owns a
semi-automatic firearm.
He was convicted of knowingly transferring an unregistered machine gun
-- a standard semi-auto rifle which fired two three-round bursts and
then jammed. Gun owners call that a malfunction. The federal government
calls it an easy way to get a felony conviction. Olofson was sentenced
to 30 months in federal prison.
David Olofson is an information technology professional with a wife,
three children and a mortgage. Until his conviction, he was also in the
National Guard.
The Olofson Relief Fund has been set up to allow concerned Americans to
help the Olfoson's make their mortgage and (their one) car payments
while Dave is unable to work.
If you decide to contribute to the Olofson Relief Fund, your credit
card will be charged monthly for the amount you have indicated. This
will continue until Olofson is out of prison -- or you notify us to
discontinue the charges.
Gun Owners of America is acting as the agent for the fund. All moneys
collected will be transferred regularly to the mortgage and car loan
holders.
To make a monthly contribution, go to:
http://www.gunowners.org/olofson.htm
To read about this case in greater detail, see:
http://www.gunowners.org/op0850.htm

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org
Monday, July 28, 2008
In open defiance of the Supreme Court's decision striking down the
Washington D.C. gun control law, the City Council passed an
"emergency" law that keeps in place almost all of the law that was
ruled unconstitutional.
For example, though the Court ruled specifically that the city's ban on
handguns violated the Second Amendment, most handguns still
cannot be registered because D.C. bureaucrats classify
semi-automatic pistols as "machine guns."
Even Dick Heller, who brought the case against Washington's gun
ban, was rejected when he tried to register his handgun because any
"bottom loading" firearm is a "machine gun"
according to the D.C.
police.
Similarly, while the Court found that "the requirement that any lawful
firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a "trigger lock" is
unconstitutional, the city kept in place the "lock up your
safety" law
unless the resident is in immediate danger.
The D.C. Council is thus rendering the Supreme Court victory for gun
rights meaningless, while leaving residents defenseless.
Congress needs to repeal the District's gun control law to ensure that the
Supreme Court decision is not a hollow victory.
According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has
the authority and responsibility to govern the District. It can simply
repeal the District's onerous gun law.
Not surprisingly, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has no
intention of allowing the D.C. gun ban repeal legislation to come to the
floor, even though it is cosponsored by more than half of the members
of Congress.
To free the bill from the Speaker's death grip, Representative Mark
Souder (R-IN) has filed a discharge petition to bring the bill directly to
the floor. Rep. Souder needs 218 cosigners for the petition to be
successful. There are currently 109 signers.
There are not many days left in this legislative session, so it is vital that
the discharge petition moves quickly. Please contact your representative
and urge him or her to support the repeal of the D.C. gun ban and to
sign the Souder discharge petition. You can visit the Gun Owners
Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to
send your Reps. the pre-written e-mail message below.
----- Pre-written letter -----
Dear Representative,
The Washington, D.C. city council is making a mockery of the recent
Supreme Court decision supporting the individual right to keep and
bear arms.
Though the Court ruled the city's handgun ban unconstitutional, DC is
still making it illegal to own most handguns. The Court also ruled that
the District's gun lock and gun storage law violates the Constitution, but
under the city's new "emergency" gun law, firearms must be kept
inoperable unless there is an immediate danger to residents.
Representative Mark Souder has filed a discharge petition to bring a bill
to repeal the District's gun laws to the floor for a vote.
Please stand up for the Second Amendment and sign the Souder
discharge petition.
Sincerely,

Rebellious Republicans are flexing their muscles in California. More of this needs to be done around the country. The Democrat machine is all but set to destroy what we, as a nation have to believe in. That being limited government, free markets, as well as the general liberty and freedoms so long as we do not infringe on the liberty and freedom of others.

No Permanent GOP Minority
by Robert Novak
Posted: 07/07/2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When House Republican leaders left Washington for their Fourth of July break, they felt good about outwitting the Democratic majority. The feeling was not reciprocated 3,000 miles away, where conservative California Republican activists were drafting an ultimatum. The Lincoln Club of Orange County is telling GOP leaders of both the House and Senate that it is too late to repent. They must go — or else lose big money.

The message: “Come Nov. 5, should the current GOP leadership in either house survive to lead in a new Congress, the Lincoln Club of Orange County will review the financial backing of all congressional Republicans, and we urge others to do likewise. A GOP caucus that would re-elect such leaders is not one we would likely continue to support. Because, simply put, we refuse to support a permanent minority.”

The Lincoln Club estimates that its nearly 300 members will individually contribute $1.5 million to federal causes and candidates in the 2008 election cycle. The club is spreading its message to angry Republicans throughout California and around the nation. The ultimatum finds responsive members of the House (if not the Senate), who even now are preparing a housecleaning after the additional loss of seats in this year’s election.

House GOP leaders were triumphant June 27 as Congress recessed for a week. They had passed war funding and telephone surveillance bills with solid Republican backing and minority Democratic support. Chairman David Obey had just shut down the Appropriations Committee process so that Democrats would not be forced to vote on Republican oil-drilling proposals. The Republican leaders congratulated themselves that they were winning the debate over whether boosting production or curbing speculation is the proper response to runaway gasoline prices.

Unfortunately, say Republican reformers, it looked like the operation was a great success but the patient died. Popular though expanded drilling may be, Republicans are blamed for four-dollar gasoline. Away from the party leadership table, members blame a negative Republican image created by leaders.

That’s the view of the Lincoln Club paper signed by Rich Wagner, its president, and Chip Hanlon, a board member. It deplores refusal by party leaders to support a one-year moratorium on earmarks, whose 285 percent growth when Congress was under Republican control is “the perfect symbol of the GOP-led profligacy that drives us crazy still.” Earmarks “epitomize the fiscal recklessness that led to Republicans becoming a minority in 2006. … It’s no wonder the Republican leadership continued to fail on … entitlement reform and a reduction in federal spending.”

The Lincoln Club blasts conservative Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, whose personal earmarks totaled $83 million last year, for defending his pork as “being entrepreneurial about bringing something home.” It also assails conservative Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, a member of the leadership who has opposed earmark reform and voted on the floor against only one earmark. With his annual earmarks totaling $22.5 million, McCotter declared a year ago, “I will not unilaterally disarm my donor state.”

On June 25, however, McCotter apparently felt enough heat to disarm unilaterally, with a surprise announcement that he had requested no earmarks this year. It may be too late for the 42-year-old third-termer, threatened with losing his House Republican Policy Committee chairmanship after only two years if the Lincoln Club of Orange County gets its desired clean sweep.

“We urge other Republican donor groups to reinforce this important beginning,” read the club’s ultimatum, adding, “It is not credible to ask the American people to return Republicans to the majority when all we offer them is the same group of leaders and policies they so recently rejected.”

The statement asserts these leaders “have no idea what we say when we get together” and are “still oblivious to the source of our discontent.” Now, if these contributors have their way, it is too late for the leaders. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who began his campaign for re-election in Kentucky by bragging about his earmarks for the state, probably has more to worry about from his Democratic election foe than insurgent Republican senators. House Minority Leader John Boehner, who sponsors no earmarks himself but has not backed reform, faces an all-too serious challenge.

I listened in utter astonishment to the Obama Berlin speech the other day. I felt like it was utter hypocrisy, pure and simple. Once again, The Patriot Post hits the ball over the fence. Congrats!

“Barack Obama had ample reason to recall the Berlin Airlift of 1948 during his dramatic speech in the German capital last week. The airlift was an early and critical success for the West in the Cold War, with clear relevance to our own time, the war in Iraq, and the free world’s conflict with radical Islam. But having reached back 60 years to that pivotal hour of American leadership, Obama proceeded to draw from it exactly the wrong lessons. The Soviet Union had blockaded western Berlin on June 24, 1948, choking off access to the city by land and water and threatening 2.5 million people with starvation. Moscow was determined to force the United States and its allies out of Berlin. To capitulate to Soviet pressure, as Obama rightly noted, ‘would have allowed Communism to march across Europe.’ Yet many in the West advocated retreat, fearing that the only way to keep the city open was to use the atomic bomb—and launch World War III. For President Truman, retreat was unthinkable. ‘We stay in Berlin, period,’ he decreed. Overriding the doubts of senior advisers… Truman ordered the Armed Forces to begin supplying Berlin by air. Military planners initially thought that with a ‘very big operation,’ they might be able to get 700 tons of food to Berlin. Within weeks, the Air Force was flying in twice that amount every day, as well as supplies of coal. … It would take nearly a year and more than 277,000 flights. But in the end it was the Soviets who backed down. On May 12, 1949, the blockade ended—a triumph of American prowess and perseverance, and a momentous vindication for Truman. But not once in his Berlin speech did Obama acknowledge Truman’s fortitude, or even mention his name. Nor did he mention the US Air Force, or the 31 American pilots who died during the airlift. Indeed, Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America’s military might. Save for a solitary reference to ‘the first American plane,’ he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all. He spoke only of ‘the airlift,’ ‘the planes,’ ‘those pilots.’ Perhaps their American identity wasn’t something he cared to stress amid all his ‘people of the world’ salutations and talk of ‘global citizenship.’… Sixty years later, it is a very different kind of Democrat who is running for president. Obama may have wowed ‘em in Berlin, but he’s no Harry Truman.” —Jeff Jacoby

Like this:

There are two ways of studying economic theory. One approach is mathematical, and has been much enhanced by the computing power available to the individual economist. The other is historical and relies on the accumulated understanding of economic theory and practice.

The events of 2007 and 2008 have shown the limitations of the mathematical method. The credit crunch was not foreseen by anyone that I read, but it came as a shock to the number crunchers — it took them completely by surprise.

It did not come as a shock to the economic historians, who happily settled down to discuss the resemblances between this credit crisis and earlier ones, going back to the South Sea Scheme in 1720 or the Wall Street Panic of 1907. The economic historians know that similar events had happened before, and had also learned, often by painful experience, that such events are quite common.

Neither group foresaw the actual events of August 2007, but the historians were quite able to put the credit crisis in a context of other crises. Even though both groups were taken by surprise, it was the mathematicians whose previous forecasts were stood on their heads.

By and large, historical economists, who follow the example of major English economists such as Maynard Keynes or W.S. Jevons, do not regard timing as any more predictable for economic shocks than for earthquakes.

One can say that there is a build up of stress in the system that will eventually have to be released. One cannot say that the release of pressure will occur next Tuesday or next August or even next century.

Some say the big earthquake will happen along the San Andreas Fault in California. It may come tomorrow; it may come before 2050; it may not happen for 500 years. We can usefully predict what and where, but we can very seldom predict when. This makes expectation difficult to quantify, though all markets are based on expectations

What we do know from economic history is that there is a cycle of debt that has to be relieved. In twentieth century history the war debts of the first war played their malign part in the European depression of the 1920s and eventually in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Austrian School of Economics, and particularly Friedrich von Hayek, developed the Debt-Deflation theory of the business cycles. Hayek indeed foresaw the risk of a deflationary crisis as early as 1927.

Keynesian economics, as expounded in his General Theory, 1936, were criticised at the time for an inadequate appreciation of the negative aspects of excessive debt. Bankers of the Gold Standard era attached great importance to the balance sheet rather than the profit and loss account. I get the impression nowadays that people read the current account much more carefully than they do the capital account — partly because they think that off balance sheet financing has reduced the transparency of the balance sheet itself.

As a result, government balance sheets, bank balance sheets, corporate balance sheets and personal balance sheets have all deteriorated. Finance ultimately depends on the security of capital, and weak balance sheets, at any level, are exposed to risk and to problems of opportunity cost.

An old-fashioned banker would now be calling for strengthening of balance sheets at every level. But the liquidation of debt takes years to accomplish and diverts fund from current consumption. The 2007 credit crunch calls for liquidation of debt, but that is bound to have a deflationary effect.

When will people learn? From gutting Tabor, to referendum “C” the Independence Institute is becoming almost prophet like in getting things correct. As opposed to Colorado government, both Democrat and Republican.

I wish this wasn’t the case, because it’s not exactly enjoyable to be proven right at the expense of Colorado taxpayers. In 2004 I ran the David vs. Goliath campaign against RTD’s 67% tax increase called FasTracks. Goliath won. We said it was plainly obvious that it was going to be underfunded and over-cost. Read what we wrote back then. Of course the corporate welfare machine behind the tax increase, and Mayor Hickenlooper in front of it promised the impossible again.

RTD conceded Friday that it cannot deliver the FasTracks program as promised to voters four years ago. The program, originally budgeted at $4.7 billion when voters approved a sales tax to support it, rose to $6.1 billion last year and is poised for a substantial increase next month during budget talks with the elected board.

This is an unfortunate situation where we taxpayers are in no situation to continue to fund this massive failure, while no mayor is willing to push the project back or cut lines in their district. At this point, everyone is looking for a viable solution. In addition to my suggestion to ask the voters to kill it, the Rocky gave some other possible solutions:

Strategies that will be discussed soon include some, all or a combination of these:
* Going beyond the original completion year of 2017.
* Trimming some project elements such as was done with the West Corridor light rail, the first FasTracks corridor to start construction.
* Shortening some of the planned lines.
* Privatizing the financing and construction of more than the two corridors now being privatized.
* Asking the legislature for permission to go to voters for additional taxes.You can bet that TaxTracks, as Ari Armstrong of FreeColorado.com calls it, will continue to dissapoint its supporters and demand more and more taxpayer money to stay afloat. Those options above are upsetting, no doubt, but fleecing our wallets continuously for another decade or so is even worse. I say we put it to another vote and let Coloradans decide if they have had enough.

Jon Caldara opens up a can of worms yet again over at Colorado’s Independence Institute. It seems that we will be re-visiting the idea of government accountability. It is to bad that the organizations below are so late in getting onto the band wagon. Jon has been at it for years!

Early this week, the Denver Post made an issue out of accountability in government. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited! The editorial is one part in a series called Open Government 2008 by the Colorado Press Association. At the end of the article there are links to the other pieces, all discussing open and transparent government. A few of the articles state that Colorado is ahead of the curve with our Sunshine Laws and Open Records Act. (Sidenote: Take a look at Colorado’s page on the Sunshine Review website). Pioneer or not, Colorado still has a ways to go in terms of accountability and transparency. As Justin Longo points out, yeah it’s great that we don’t have a huge and intrusive NJ style state government. Instead we’ve got over 3,000 local governments here in Colorado running around doing what they want, and it’s difficult to keep our eyes on each and every one of them. I’m thrilled that this is an issue to both the Denver Post and the Colorado Press Association, and I hope it continues to stay a hot topic as we continue to work on it here at the Institute.

Mark Udall has decided that all of us need to follow him down his yellow brick road. I just have to wonder what he does when the wind does not blow?

Boulder, CO — Today U.S. Senate Candidate Mark Udall announced his solution to high gas prices: the WindCar 3000, an electric car powered by a giant windmill atop the roof that can also serve to catch favorable winds.

“The WindCar 3000 offers a practical alternative to Colorado’s addiction to oil,” Udall said.”With gas prices around $4 per gallon, now is not the time drill or produce more oil in the U.S. Now is the time for forward-thinking individuals to adopt exciting new technologies and free us from oil.”

These are the names and addresses I have so far, there are some inquiries being made by a contact I have that IS in the apartment business. I do know this much, the TAA, Texas Apartment Association has a specific clause in their contract concerning military personnel and their transfers and activations, and that clause is in favor OF the troops.

I called El Lago Apartments and spoke to a person named Stephanie, and according to her the El Lago Apartments doesn’t operate under TAA leasing agreements. They would discuss the matter no further.

I am trying to pin down something on this El Lago Partners LTD, I might not be able to get it all until Monday, I have *feelers* out.

I will also be contacting the National Guard Bureau Public Affairs On Call, PAO email (703)-627-7273 and the office ofPublic Affairsemail(703)-607-2584 on Monday.

I hope some of you will post this on your blogs and get involved, this type of thing can’t be allowed to happen to our troops. No matter how you feel about Bush and the war in Iraq, this isn’t about him, it’s about our TROOPS, and they have no choice but to follow orders and go when and where they are ordered.